Thursday, 17 June 2010
Beck Recruits Thurston Moore and Tortoise for Next Record Club
Beck's Record Club project-- in which he enlists friends to cover an entire album in a day, then posts the results to his website-- stands as a consistently fascinating ongoing project. At the moment, we're almost done hearing the version of the INXS album Kick that Beck did with St. Vincent, Liars, and Os Mutantes. And now Time Out Chicago reports that Beck has lined up the collaborators for his next Record Club project: Tortoise and Thurston Moore.
According to Time Out, Tortoise visited Beck's studio last weekend, while they were touring the West Coast. The Sonic Youth leader also checked in. No word yet on what album they might've covered or when we'll get to hear it, but Tortoise bassist/guitarist Douglas McCombs tells Time Out that the assembled luminaries played a "broad spectrum of music that was sort of appropriate."
While you let this news percolate, check out St. Vincent's Annie Clark singing the INXS jam "Never Tear Us Apart" as part of the current Record Club project, because damn.
While you let this news percolate, check out St. Vincent's Annie Clark singing the INXS jam "Never Tear Us Apart" as part of the current Record Club project, because damn.
Maradona knows how to use a vuvuzela...
Okay, okay, definitively the last vuvuzela post from me, I swear...
Comic book publisher wins battle over nudity in iPad Ulysses
Almost 80 years after a judge ruled that James Joyce's Ulysses was not obscene, allowing it to be sold in the US, the publisher of a comic book version of the seminal novel has won its own small battle against suppression.
Just in time for Bloomsday – today's worldwide celebration of all things Joyce and Ulysses – Apple has decided to allow the nude pictures in Throwaway Horse's graphic novel version of the book to be shown on the iPad. It had previously asked the publisher to edit its free iPad application of the comic, Ulysses Seen, to remove any depictions of nudity.
Throwaway Horse cropped the image of a naked woman to focus on her face, and edited a scene featuring a nude Buck Mulligan. "Apple's policy had been that app developers should not be permitted to use nudity in any of their images, even if it's pixellated or covered by 'fig leaves'. Our comic has a mature rating (no one under 17 understands Joyce's book anyway), but we were still not allowed to show frank nudity," said illustrator Robert Berry.
The team at Throwaway Horse were "shocked" by the request, he said. "I know all the famous stories regarding this novel's battles against censorship, and certainly there are later chapters of the book that intentionally push the boundaries of social decorum, but nothing like that was in my first chapter of the adaptation" – as far as they have currently got with their ongoing project. "I don't think the Apple representative that I first spoke with even knew what Ulysses was," added the publisher's business manager, Chad Rutkowski.
Because they still wanted the comic to be available on the iPad, Throwaway Horse agreed to Apple's request. "We believed that our method for showing and annotating the novel was completely unique to the iPad experience and wanted to be a part of that. So we made a second version of the work to hold up to Apple's guideline while still carrying the original pages on our website," said Berry.
The publisher says it has just been told by Apple "that they made a mistake in establishing guidelines that were too rigid to allow for artistic growth". "[They] seem to be treating nudity and mature content in a 'case specific' manner now," said a delighted Berry, so the complete version of the Ulysses extract is now available for the iPad.
"That's certainly better than the previous method and means that a lot of good new material can be showcased through the iPad," said Berry. "I think it's a great delivery method for all kinds of authors and artists to explore and be seen in, not the bookshelf of a Walmart that the old guidelines turned it into."
"We made a mistake," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post, adding that when the comic's art was brought to Apple's attention, it "called the developers and offered them the opportunity to resubmit". "[Ulysses is] now in the store with the original panel drawings," she said.
The Ulysses Seen project "was dreamed up on a bet in an Irish pub and more than a few pints of Guinness" four years ago, after Berry attended a Bloomsday reading and began to believe that a comic "was the only medium that could faithfully adapt Joyce's novel". "Only comics have the plasticity of time and weight of visual symbols needed to make it work and comics, unlike film or theatre or audio books, are a reading experience in the same way that a novel is. People can dive in or stop at a point and still be carried back into that kind of experience," he said.
Rutkowski agreed. "We are concerned that fundamental works of literature are going to go ignored by millennials unless you give them a way in," he said. "Reading Ulysses or Paradise Lost or the Inferno requires text interrupted by footnotes or resort to companion guides that ruin focusing on the work itself. We've brought all of the resources you need for comprehension of the work under one roof, and really think we've created an immersive experience."
Alison Flood @'The Guardian'
wikileaks Salon is researching the Manning/Lamo/Poulsen/Zetter case; any info about these players? Contact GGreenwald@salon.com
Number of goals after 14 World Cup games
1930 - 46
1934 - 54
1938 - 60
1950 - 42
1954 - 71
1958 - 31
1962 - 30
1966 - 35
1970 - 35
1974 - 32
1978 - 37
1982 - 40
1986 - 28
1990 - 30
1994 - 37
1998 - 34
2002 - 39
2006 - 31
2010 - 23
John Robb interview: Open Source Warfare & Resilience
How big of a domestic threat is there from the narco-insurgency in Mexico and the growing power of Latin American gangs in America?
Very big. A threat that dwarfs anything we face in Afghanistan (a useless money pit of a war). It's not a threat that can be solved by conventional military means, since the problem is that Mexico is a hollow state. Unlike a failed state like Somalia (utter chaos), a hollow state still retains the facade of a nation (borders, bureaucracy, etc.). However, a hollow state doesn't exert any meaningful control over the countryside. It's not only that the state can't do it militarily, they don't have anything they can offer people. So, instead, control is ceded to local groups that can provide basic levels of opt-in security, minimal services, and jobs via new connections to the global economy - think in terms of La Familia in Michoacana.
The real danger to the US is that not only will these groups expand into the US (they already have), it is that these groups will accelerate the development of similar homegrown groups in the US as our middle class evaporates.
Interview
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